Europe

Cambridge, England-based technology VC deals tracker Library House, which went in to administration last month after the venture sector itself dried up, is selling its database to Dow Jones's VentureSource, a larger, similar service. Administrator Leonard Curtis made the sale on December 23, DJ said on Tuesday.

Ad holding company WPP Group is beginning the new year with preparations to lay off of thousands at its global agencies, Guardian reported. The decision was made during budget meetings held during the last two months. The units that have staffing costs greater than 60 percent of revenue. But the cuts at the global company will not be spread evenly. Reductions will be heavily felt in North America and Western Europe, places that have been hit hard by the advertising slump.

After spending a good amount of time talking to technology customers in Europe
during the last quarter, I've concluded that attitudes towards enterprise social
computing tend to be quite different on the eastern side of the Atlantic, which
seems doubly significant since most (though not all) social software vendors
hail from North America.

—Sony losing less money on PS3's : Gamasutra reports on a new iSuppli report about the PlayStation 3's manufacturing costs—noting that it costs Sony (NYSE: SNE) about $449 to make a PS3. The consoles retail for $399—a major improvement over how much it used to cost to produce them—meaning Sony only loses about $50 on every one sold.

The British music industry had always eschewed American cousins' penchant for suing illegal downloaders. Now America's RIAA music org has come around to a European way of thinking. It's giving up suing the downloaders and will instead enlist ISPs to send warning letters to transgressors.

Back in 2003, Voom, the brainstorm of Cablevision's Charles Dolan, was the future of HD—at least on paper: a dedicated HD satellite service that would be far ahead of cable operators and other satellite providers. When that didn't pan out, Voom became a programming service with 15 HD networks. Now, five years, hundreds of millions of dollars and very few customers later, Rainbow Media Holdings has admitted defeat and will shut down the service in the U.S.

A very quick exit for a service just launched: Socialmedian, the New York City-based social news service launched by former Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg, has been acquired by Xing, the Germany-headquartered European business social network.

Even though the global financial meltdown has been affecting Russia as well, media companies still see enough growth potential to make entering that market worthwhile. The Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) Company has entered into a joint venture with Russian cable company Media-One to create a free-to-air Disney channel.

What does Facebook want for Christmas?

As Yahoo's 1,500 or so layoffs are happening today (see the layoffs BB site SAI for wall-to-wall coverage), more such reductions may be coming soon, the company warns.